First principles, and the biggest question: where did the idea come from?
I wish I knew for sure — I’d go back there more often.
The slightly complicated truth is, in one way the idea came easily. In another, there was a time when I didn’t think it would come at all.
I wrote a lot in 2009: among other things, a good chunk of a novel called Captured and a 6-part crime thriller for the BBC. (Luther, starring Idris Elba. Coming soon.)
Writing an entire TV series is a narrative Götterdämmerung; it sucks in all your ideas, big and small, old and new. You can’t see past it, round it, over it or under it. Amusing little notions you’ve had resting in the back of your head for twenty years, waiting for just the right time to use them? TV sucks them up and keeps rolling. The brainstorm you had this morning while putting the kettle on — the kind of thing you might want to sit on for a year or two, see how it develops? That goes straight in the pot. A TV thriller is a gaping Hellmouth into which you shovel everything, never quickly enough to keep it satisfied.
In circumstances like that, it’s hard to find the mental elbow-room you need to prepare a new novel. It’s a bit like planning a menu while vomiting.
I did have vague book ideas, entirely separate to the world of Luther. In fact, I had several — I’d always wanted to do a story a bit like The 39 Steps, for example, and I’d always wanted to write a thriller that takes place over the course of a single night (being a fan of Scorcese’s After Hours). I wanted to write about a character who was the human equivalent of an urban fox.
A few of these ideas kept me excited for a week or two, but none of them felt quite right; by which I mean, none of them made me want to sit down and start writing.
Eventually, because I’d written so much that year, I got to worrying that I’d gone to the well once too often: my allocation of ideas had just plain dried up. I was afraid I might be all written out, that I might have no more books left in me.
This went on for a long time. I became too superstitious even to talk about it.
Then one night I woke at 2 a.m. and had the idea. It popped into my head like the answer to a random question on a quiz show. I dashed out of bed and wrote a very rough outline in about half an hour.
My wife came blinking through to my little office to ask what on earth was wrong.
I said, Nothing’s wrong! I’ve got the new book!
The reason I’m telling you this is: having thought about it a great deal recently, in near despair and in something close to elation, I’ve reached the conclusion that our allocation of stories is only limited if we’re too parsimonious with them.
Neal Stephenson uses more ideas in one novel than most novelists use in an entire career; so does Michael Moorcock. I loved Anthony Burgess for his magnificent profligacy. I’m awed by Joyce Carol Oates’s output, and Stephen King’s, too.
This is how I think such fecund novelists get to be that way: I think they allow themselves to be. They’re not thinking about writing, or worrying about writing, or talking about writing, or writing about writing. They’re writing.
Perhaps, while I’d been agonising about using up my quota of ideas, the opposite has been happening — the train was at the station, but it hadn’t broken down: the doors were open and it was idling while new ideas shoved in to fill the void left by the used-up ones, until they’d taken up all available space. Then the doors closed, the train pulled off again…and two strangers locked eyes, causing the small detonation that woke me up.
I don’t know if that’s true. I won’t know until it’s time to write the next book, or maybe until I’m halfway through this one.
If I’m right, then really this post has just been a way of repeating the advice that’s given to would-be novelists so often it’s become a truism: If you want to write, write.
Sometimes, it can feel like you’re squandering material. But if the idea you’re working on right now turns out bad, get it out then throw it away: a better one will be along in a minute. And in another minute, a better one that that.
You just have to give it room. Don’t hoard: spend.
